What is man and other essays Author:Mark Twain Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE IF I understand the idea, the Bazar invites several of us to write upon the above text. It means the change in my life's cour... more »se which introduced what must be regarded by ine. as the most important condition of my career. /But it also implies -- without intention, perhaps -- ihat that turning-point itself was the creator of the new condition. This gives it too much distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. It is only the last link in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned to produce the cardinal result; it is not any more important than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors. Each of the ten thousand did its appointed share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all necessary; to have left out any one of them would have defeated the scheme and brought about some other result. I know we have a fashion of saying "such and such an event was the turning-point in my life," but we shouldn't say it. We should merely grant that its place as last link in the chain makes it the most conspicuous link; in real importance it has no advantage over any one of its predecessors. Copyright, 1910, by Harper« less